


Darkroom 00 - Prelude

by Soledad



Series: The Darkroom of Atlantis [1]
Category: JAG, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Even Stargate Personnel Needs A Little Fun, Marines Aren't Always Idiots, Multi, When The Cat Is Away The Mice Get To Dance, Zelenka Is An Evil Genius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 17:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7724008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soledad/pseuds/Soledad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one was able to guess the original purpose of the place. But then Tiner said that it looked like the darkrooms of a gay fetish club. And that comment had consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkroom 00 - Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> P.O. Tiner is, of course, Chuck Carrington’s character from JAG. I loved that guy, so I imported him. He isn’t on the show any longer anyway… which is a shame.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PRELUDE – THE CREATING OF THE _DARKROOM_**

They had found this particular area at about a month before the deadly nanovirus had been accidentally released, due to the previous flood. Just like the nanovirus lab – or the one earlier, harbouring the malevolent energy creature – this place had an independent system that wasn’t connected to the main computer network. Rodney wondered just how many such places – with potentially deadly outcome – were lurking somewhere in the underbelly of the city, and whether they would be able to feel completely safe in Atlantis, ever.

The others, although slightly less pessimistic, had shared his worries and approached the strange area with caution. At first no one could guess its original purpose – and, quite frankly, they had remained clueless for some time. It was like nothing else they had seen in Atlantis so far – which, considering how short a time they had spent there, didn’t say much.

Basically, it contained of a large room, not unlike the dance floor of a disco, complete with a gallery for onlookers, and several small rooms obviously designed as the Ancient equivalent of storage lockers with low, comfortable benches of the same marble-like stone used elsewhere in the city. There were also middle-sized rooms that could only be entered by or exited to from the main hall. These had more of the aforementioned benches; however, according to Dr. Corrigan, these used to have some sort of padding and leather covering which had simply disintegrated during the long abandonment of the city.

“They look like the darkrooms of a fetish club,” Petty Officer Jason Tiner, the only addition of the US Navy to the expedition, and Dr. Weir’s personal aide, commented.

Eyebrows of various size and colour were raised at this comment. Tiner frowned, seeing this reaction, then the truth began to dawn on him… and he shrugged.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “I have a half-brother who’s gay. There was a time when I used to be a little… curious.”

“You went to a gay club?” Sergeant Jamie Markham, second-youngest member of the expedition gaped in shock, his pretty mouth round like that of a fish. His exceptionally fair complexion – which was quite a surprise in case of someone with such thick, ink-black curls – caused him blush in the most inappropriate moments. Right now, he was beet red.

Tiner rolled his eyes. “I said curious, not stupid, Jamie! I went in my civvies.”

“Found anything interesting?” Sergeant Michael Eugene Bates, the big bad-ass head of Atlantis security, asked.

“Yeah,” Tiner replied with a grin. “I found out that I’m really into women.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
They reported the found to Dr. Weir, and after some heated discussion it was finally decided that the place had most likely been some kind of recreational area and that it should be used for similar purposes in the future. Nobody was surprised that Dr. Grodin offered to take over the management. The man was simply good with that sort of thing. And considering that the movie night was practically the only source of entertainment in Atlantis, everybody welcomed the idea of the monthly _Themenabends_ , as the Germans called it, meaning that once a month, the dance floor would be transformed into a Wild West Saloon, a French dance bistro, a Japanese tea house (complete with geishas) or whatever the creative minds of the expedition came up with.

The… unofficial use of the place was a purely scientific project at first, inspired by P.O. Tiner’s infamous remark and masterminded – how could it have happened in any other way – by the evil genius of Dr. Zelenka. He and Dr. Grodin having been a close-knit team since Antarctica (and, according to rumour, in more than just the professional sense of the word), it was easy for them to organize the other purpose of the recreational area.

To put it blandly, Dr. Zelenka had discovered a market hole and slowly, carefully, unobstrusely built up a service that had been sorely needed in Atlantis since the beginning. He provided the local equivalent of a swinger club, and people blessed his name for it.

Dating had been practically nonexistent in the city, and the UST-factor had reached dangerous levels. Doctors Grodin and Zelenka weren’t particularly bothered by it – they had each other, after all – but the rest of the science department was ready to climb up the walls, should they not get a chance to blow off some pent-up sexual frustration. Zelenka’s service – the _Darkroom_ as he called it – offered a way out of this frustration. Fast, anonymous sex, if that was what his customers wanted; or a room where they could indulge themselves, undisturbed and unhurried, in whatever sexual practices they preferred.

The _Darkroom_ had its _Themenabends_ as well, carefully organized and kept secret not only from the military, but also from the quite prudish Dr. Weir. In these nights, customers would leave their clothes in the storage lockers and enter the dance floor – the _hunting ground_ – masked and in fancy dresses, though a lot more scantily clad than on the official events. They would seek out partners in the dimly lit hall, and after some dancing and drinking vanish with their chosen partner in one of the darkrooms, to have simple, honest sex, without any strings attached.

Sometimes these _Themenabends_ were for both genders, sometimes for men or for women only. And on rare occasions, the _Darkroom_ would even offer fetish nights or BDSM games, with presentations.

The invitations always arrived encrypted to the laptops of the individual scientists. The guests booked their storage locker and/or their darkroom by using a clever program written by Dr. Kusanagi, which erased all data after registration. Customers had no names, only a number, and even that was different every time.

One would have thought that such a regular activity, which involved almost half of the city’s population, would inevitably be spotted, but it wasn’t. Firstly, both organizators and participants were the best and the brightest the good old Earth could offer, with astronomical IQs and a researcher’s natural hang to paranoia. Secondly, the legal operation of the place served as an excellent guise. And thirdly, the organizators developed a random pattern for these activities, based on the theory of statistical improbability, which made discovery highly unlikely. Also, the engineers replaced the Ancient door mechanisms with their Earth equivalents, thus banning the peril of some jarhead with an ATA gene stumbling into their… private activities. Besides, they found much better use for the removed crystals.

The team of organisers was soon strengthened by Dr. Corrigan, who was excellent at planning in advance as well as at changing already existing plans on the spot, if necessary, and by Dr. Parrish. The botanist had discovered some native plant on one of the visited planets that, if its stem snapped, produced a clear, viscous fluid that even had some mild healing properties. Therefore it made excellent massage oil - _and_ lube. Dr. Parrish grew the plant in various places in the greenhouses – officially for the former purpose, but its usefulness for the latter made the botanists very popular in the science department. 

And beyond, but that wasn’t something Dr. Parrish would speak of. He didn’t want to lose his other customers, and in this case he was very much for the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. Although only in this case, as people very well knew. Parrish’ interests, however wide-spread they might be, all headed into the same direction.

Getting the… _special_ rooms furnished proved surprisingly easy. Various members of the science department had gotten the one or other chance to visit foreign worlds, and many of them had brought back strange items, more or less voluntarily achieved as trade goods, standing or lying in private quarters, unused. Now they could be put to better use.

The outdated examination table Dr. Beckett couldn’t resist on some backward planet’s flea market was just the tip of the iceberg. It had absolutely no use for the Infirmary, but it had nice padding and was covered with soft leather – in dark blue. It had been standing in Dr. Beckett’s quarters, taking up place, for quite some time, when Dr. Zelenka requested it for the fetish room.

“Miko says it will make nice paddling bench for those being spanked,” he explained matter-of-factly.

Dr. Beckett’s eyes became as big and round as saucers.

“Dr. Kusanagi?” he said in utter shock. “How would _she_ know anything about such things?”

Zelenka shrugged. “She worked as dominatrix to pay for college,” he explained. “Her father wouldn’t pay for education of female child, so she had to earn school money otherwise.”

This wasn’t the only shocking revelation people involved in the creating of the _Darkroom_ had to digest, but certainly the most unexpected one. It wasn’t easy to imagine sweet-faced Miko Kusanagi, who seemed to live in permanent terror of McKay’s temper tantrums, clad in black leather and wielding a whip. But it promised to be an interesting program, Zelenka had told Grodin, while still in the planning phase, and Dr. Kusanagi tentatively agreed to make the one or other appearance as Lady Shaqira again.

Only the small circle of organisers knew in advance when the _Themenabends_ would take place and what the theme of each one would be. Dr. Corrigan was responsible for coming up with ideas and finding the right person to carry them out. Doctors Grodin, Kusanagi and Zelenka did the encoding and other computer stuff so that the military types wouldn’t discover their track by accident. And Dr. Kavanagh was responsible for the regular checking of the place for any hidden cameras and listening devices. His disposition guaranteed that nobody would ask what he was doing there. Besides, he was the most thorough of all. If he declared a place clean, it _was_ clean.

“We’re not prejudiced against military…” Zelenka explained Dr. Toivannen, the Finnish geophysicist, somewhat defensively.

“Well, actually, we _are_ ,” Corrigan interrupted. “At the very least against the stupid ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of the US military.” Considering that Dr. Corrigan was straight as a board, it was a purely theoretical statement, based on solidarity with his colleagues from the other side of the street.

“…but we don’t want homophobic Marines to storm into our fun,” Zelenka continued, as if Corrigan hadn’t said anything. “There are too few women in the city, and even the more or less straight men might have to seek out… other possibilities, eventually. We want to offer place where people can _experiment_ , without fearing retribution… even unofficial one.”

" _Especially_ unofficial one," Corrigan commented darkly.

“Sounds good to me,” Toivannen shrugged; like most Northern people, he had a very relaxed attitude towards sex or nudity. “Just holler when you wish to use the sauna. We don’t want the wrong people to meet there, clad in a towel only.”

A somewhat larger room near the recreational area, the original purpose of which couldn’t be discovered either, had been recently turned into a sauna, to the great joy of all Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Russian expedition members. Surprisingly enough, the Athosians took to this new form of relaxation very quickly, so Toivannen – the unofficial sauna chief – had to organize bookings carefully. Being left out from such small luxuries could have led to serious tension.

“We won’t be able to keep this a secret forever,” Dr. Selikhova, one of the Russian geologists, pointed out. “Military is resourceful; and besides, they need this… _service_ as much as we do. Probably even more.”

“True enough,” Grodin agreed. “But we need to check out the ones we invite in very carefully… and only after we’ve run this business successfully for a while first.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
The others agreed. Eventually, they branched out to certain members of the military as well, of course. It would have been hard to overlook – for the attentive observer, at least – the _very_ special friendships between Sergeants Bates and Stackhouse, or Sergeants Stackhouse and Markham, respectively.

Oh, they _tried_ to be discreet. In fact, they _were_ amazingly discreet, as far as the military was concerned. Nobody gave them any grief, which more or less proved that their fellow jarheads hadn’t discovered their dirty little secret yet. But scientists were trained to be observant, and besides, everyone agreed that Dr. Zelenka must have been a mongoose in one of his previous lives.

The man didn’t just possess insatiable curiosity, he also seemed to bring up enough energy to go and find out everything that had picked said curiosity. How he managed it despite the inhuman workload McKay piled onto his shoulders on a daily basis was everyone’s guess, but when there was something – _anything!_ – to know, one could be sure that Dr. Zelenka knew it.

And so one day Dr. Zelenka cornered Sergeant Bates and – after having him sworn to absolute secrecy – informed him about the Geek Project, as the _Darkroom_ was nicknamed for public mentioning, leaving it to the Sergeant’s discretion which member of the military contingent should be told about it. Bates appreciated both the offer and the trust, and thus he became the official military liaison of the _Darkroom_.

And people agreed that a better man for the job couldn’t have been found.


End file.
